Is it too late to get into the MPS game if you’re not in it already?
That’s a question that never seems to go away no matter how often the industry talks and talks and talks about MPS. You would think that everybody is in it already, but that’s not true at all. There are plenty of dealers still waiting and watching. If you’re one of those, there are plenty of successful MPS dealers and MPS advocates who are more than happy to give you a little push in the right direction.
“Is it ever too late to do the right thing for your customer?” asks Bill Melo, chief marketing executive, Toshiba America Business Solutions/Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions. “If you’re not well underway now, you have catching up to do, but still I’d rather be catching up and doing the right thing than not. If you’re going to be in the industry this is a big part of the industry and I don’t see how dealers grow without getting into MPS and other solutions.”
“My question would first be, ‘How are you planning on approaching it?’” asks Nathan Maust, major account executive with ASI Business Solutions in Dallas, TX. “If they’re going to come in and approach managed print from the traditional Stage 1 Managed Print with auto supply fulfillment, break-fix, toner inclusive, and a cost per page agreement, I’d say don’t waste your time. That being said, if someone were starting fresh with a managed print provider not tied to any manufacturer with all the quotas that you’re very well aware of, where dealers try to transition from a services-based to a transactional model, and they don’t have those things and want to leap Stage 1 and Stage 2 of managed print and move into intelligent print management, enterprise content management, taking the focus away from devices and pages and more to the content, and that’s how they’re going to approach it, I’d say the market is ready.”
“Absolutely not,” says Lindsay Bohon, vice president sales, GreatAmerica Financial Services Corp. “In fact 12 percent of our annual dealer study respondents say they’re planning on getting into MPS. There are a lot of successful dealers you can learn from and we are here and would welcome the opportunity to help you grow as well. The economy has normalized over the past three years with the hiring of more people we’re not feeling that decline in print today. MPS gives you that additional opportunity to help grow your base.”
“Yes and no,” responds Mitchell Filby, managing director, First Rock Consulting. “Firstly, new entrants can always come into a market and do well for a period [of time]. It’s how they continue to build their business that’s key. If a new entrant came into MPS and just did what everyone else was doing I think that would be a bad decision. Unless you are creating new value or providing something better than your competitors, you won’t survive.
“There is however still a fantastic opportunity for a provider to get into MPS if they approach it purely as a services outcome rather than a box-enabled business. MPS is still an attractive proposition for end customers – so while this is there – there is always an opportunity to get into MPS. The last point is that many, many MPS providers are still getting it wrong—and are still making potentially good money.”
For Kevin Morris, president of OneDOC Managed Print Services and a board member of the Managed Print Services Association, it’s not too late to get into MPS, especially in the SMB space.
“If you’re going to try and get into it from an enterprise perspective, you’re a little late to the game,” he says. “I’m not saying you couldn’t do it, but you’d have the cards stacked against you whereas in the SMB space there’s still opportunity out there. We still go into accounts almost weekly where they don’t have anything in place.”
“If you’re starting with a cost per page program, I’d say yes [it’s too late],” says West McDonald, vice president of business development, Print Audit. “The customer is sophisticated enough where they’ve taken cost per page programs and look at them the same way they did a toner cartridge 15 years ago.”
He adds that if you’re trying to emulate what other people are doing in managed print, it’s definitely too late.
“On other hand, that you’re trying to do something that goes beyond just the printer and start your program looking more at business process optimization, document workflow, document management, and user-based control, and look at it from that perspective today, there’s very few people that do that well so you still have a huge opportunity. Anyone looking to get into MPS today is going to have to offer a more sophisticated version of it to succeed.”
“It’s never too late to start just like it’s never too late to become an electrician,” adds Ken Stewart an analyst with Photizo Group. “You just have to understand there are lots of other electricians out there and understand what your value proposition is and what you’re going to be doing to solve your customer’s problems. Just because you want some extra bucks in your pocket, doesn’t mean your customers want to give you those bucks so you have to figure out how to help them part with those bucks.”
“I don’t think it is [too late],” observes Sarah Custer, director of service and solutions sales for Supplies Network. “It’s becoming more mainstream and end users are much more educated so you need to do your research and do it right to get into the game. There is plenty of opportunity, but it’s not going to happen by chance. If you find the right partners and engage your sales team in the right way there’s room for more players to enter the market for sure.”
“Of course not,” says Devon Thompson, manager customer experience at PrintFleet. “With how far the industry has come it’s the perfect time for others to join. You’re walking into an industry with so many others that have gone through trial and error to determine what works. Learn from other’s success and from PrintFleet whose had an opportunity to see the good bad an ugly with MPS and how the technology enables it. Whether you’re an office equipment dealer or VAR there is always an opportunity to show the industry the value you can provide with a unique program or service.”
Christian Pepper, director of marketing and business intelligence at LMI Solutions, doesn’t think the ship has sailed on MPS just yet. “The reason being the vast majority of pages are not under management today. I don’t think MPS has become as ubiquitous in our industry as a lot of people thought it would be. MPS has not achieved high penetration in the small to medium size business marketplace.”
